“I’m not a batiushka!”: Video from Easter blessing goes viral online
A clergyman claimed that "batyushkas are all abroad." Photo: Screenshot from Nazarienko’s YouTube channel
The video, uploaded by Nazariy Yeremenko on YouTube, has already gained over 2 million views. In the clip, a woman with an Easter basket approaches a man in liturgical vestments and asks him to bless her paska, addressing him as batiushka (a traditional Orthodox term for a priest, used in particular by the UOC and the ROC). The man refuses, citing the way she addressed him.
“I won’t do it, because I’m not a batiushka. I’m a priest, a father. All the batiushkas are abroad,” he says.
The location and the confession of the “not-a-batiushka” remain unknown. It is assumed he may be a representative of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) or the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).
Earlier, the UOJ reported that Dumenko had declared the practice of kissing a priest’s hand to be a servile Russian tradition.
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